Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Robert Crawford on the Young Eliot

Before
he was the winner for the Nobel Prize for Literature, before he was recognized
for some of the most innovative and remarkable poetry of the 20th
century, before “The Hollow Men” became one of the most recognizable poems in
modern times, he was Tom Eliot, young Tom Eliot.

ThomasStearnes Eliot was the youngest of six children, born in 1888 when his parents
were 45 and his siblings considerably older. His was an upper class family in
St. Louis, where his father was a vice president of a major brick manufacturer
and his grandfather the founder of Washington University in St. Louis. His
Unitarian family came from New England, and he was related to John Greenleaf
Whittier, James Russell Lowell, Henry Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry
Adams, John Adams and John Quincy Adams.

We’re
more familiar with the latter half of Eliot’s career, from the time he was
established as a poet of international renown, his Nobel Prize, and the poetry
that in many ways helped to define Modernism in literary history. But before he
was the famous poet, he was the boy, the young man at Harvard, and the
expatriate in England.

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Professional writer exploring faith and culture, life and work; happily married to Janet, the love of my life; father of two grown sons. Award-winning speechwriter and communication consultant. I am also a contributing editor for The High Calling and for TweetSpeak Poetry. I am also the author of the novels "Dancing Priest" and "A Light Shining," and the non-fiction book "Poetry at Work."